At last night’s Republican debate, Ted Cruz made a reference to a New York Times article that compared his campaign to the 2015 horror hit It Follows, calling the senator “a menacing, stalking, relentless force to watch for and run from.” This pop culture Möbius strip was retweeted this morning—without comment—by the film’s director, David Robert Mitchell:
Like the actions of all the GOP nominees, Cruz’s inept horror reference pales in comparison to that of his lord and savior, Ronald Reagan, who compared liberal foreign and economic policies to A Nightmare On Elm Street in 1988. In fact, judging by Cruz’s description of the movie—in which he describes the villain as an “evil demonic spirit that jumps from body to body possessing people”—it‘s obvious that he hasn’t even taken the time to watch it. (Judging by the unnerving side part in his hair, Cruz prefers Cronenbergian body horror to Carpenter riffs like It Follows.) The senator also ignored the sexual element of the movie, which is surprising as the specter of Ted Cruz stalking people post coitus would probably be enough to render Planned Parenthood irrelevant.
Quentin Tarantino is presumably already taking Cruz to task for the numerous holes in the mythology of his pop culture reference.